Struggling to understand the difference between irony and unfortunate events. My partner is quite smart and I don’t want to make a fool of myself.
EDIT – Thanks everyone, your responses have really helped. Hopefully I’ll be less likely to make a fool of myself describing something as ironic, in the future.
In: 3
My favorite example of irony is the Alanis Morrissette song “Ironic” which is all about unfortunate events but nothing really ironic. Which, in a way, makes the song perfectly ironic.
Its when you mix up a pitcher of juice but you use a dodgy rusty iron spoon to dissolve the sugar so the rust flakes off the spoon into the juice – the resulting mixture tastes “irony”
Where the literal definition is the opposite of the intended definition.
—Ethan Hawke, *Reality Bites*
The key to understanding irony as opposed to coincidence is that the action has the opposite of its intended consequences.
Storm clouds rolling in on a wedding day is not ironic, it is an unfortunate situation and perhaps foreshadowing.
Finding out an ex is getting married on the same day is a coincidence.
Moving the reception indoors to avoid getting wet only for a kitchen fire to set the sprinklers off is ironic.
I’d say irony is just a particularly absurd coincidence.
Famously, the song “Ironic” by Alanis Morisette contains a lot of things that are just coincidences. “Rain on your wedding day”, for instance, is just bad luck. On any given day it sometimes rains, so it’s not especially absurd that it might rain on your wedding day.
However, let’s imagine you and your partner plan your wedding around making sure it won’t rain, so you book a spot in the middle of the desert where it only rains once every 100 years. Then, that 100-year rain comes on the day you’re there for your wedding.
That’s absurd. That feels “just too perfect”, in a roll-your-eyes sort of way. That’s irony.
A location from in the Elder Scrolls Oblivion.
Fort Irony is a small fort southeast of Bravil containing goblins (quest-related). It contains only one zone, Fort Irony.
The interior is littered with the skeletal remains of the goblins’ victims. This fort contains two samples of the Shadowbanish Wine needed for the quest A Venerable Vintage.
Follow-up question: does irony always have to be contrapuntal—i.e., the collision of two opposite or unexpected things? Or can extreme parallelism also be ironic?
For example, let’s say a guy named Jerry Atrick writes the definitive book on Gen Z culture. Obviously that would be ironic.
But wouldn’t it also be ironic if Jerry wrote the definitive book on aging?
Like, if you saw a book in the book store called, “Making the Most of Your Retirement” by Jerry Atrick, wouldn’t you laugh and say, “Wow, that’s ironic”?
Irony is one of the things not sung about in that Alanis Morissette song. Those were all just shitty luck scenario’s and clear indicators that she doesn’t know the definition of Ironic either
Irony can involve an opposite meaning, or just a second meaning at odds in some way from the literal. The word derives from the Greek meaning something like “pretext” or “disingenuous” – feigned ignorance or pretend simplicity.
Latest Answers